This double CD contains two LPs – a studio recording from 1969 and a live performance from 1970. Both are by the big band which trumpeter Don Ellis led –
and when I say big band, I mean it. There are around 30 performers on the first album and 20 on the second. The Ellis band was renowned not only for its
unusual time-signatures but also for producing the loudest sound that a big band could manage. Both albums are unusual mixtures of adventurous innovation
and unbearable noise.

The New Don Ellis Band Goes Underground
is a mixture of originals composed by Don Ellis and arrangements of tunes that were then popular in the rock and pop environments. You can tell you are in
for something strange right from the start of the first number, where the sound of clangorous gongs is produced by a ring-modulator. Al Kooper’s jaunty
theme lasts for less than three minutes.

Harry Nilsson’s Don’t Leave Me begins gently but soon Don’s stratospheric trumpet soars above a mass of sound from the orchestra. The first two
tracks have background vocals supplied by the Blossoms, but vocalist Patti Allen is featured in Higher singing a tuneless vocal which turns into a
screech.

Based on a Bulgarian folk-song, Bulgarian Bulge has the feeling of klezmer music, with chattering clarinet, trombone and Ellis’s trumpet. As Don
Ellis liked, the tune has an unusual time-signature, varying between 33/16 and 36/16. Laura Nyro’s Eli’s Comin’ gets the complete big-band
treatment in jazz-fusion style. Acoustical Lass reveals a quieter side of Don Ellis as he plays a plaintive ballad on the flugelhorn. Good Feelin’ has a Latinesque rhythm, Don’s abrasive bent-note trumpet, and Jay Graydon’s rocky electric guitar. The orchestra goes briefly into
an ironical version of Bye Bye Blues, illustrating Don’s taste for humour in music. Send My Baby Back and It’s Your Thing have
slightly less painful vocals from Patti Allen, although she still shouts rather than sings.

Love For Rent
is a slice of forceful jazz-funk composed by reedman Fred Selden. Don Ellis interrupts the funk flow with some strange noises produced by echoplex through
his trumpet. Ferris Wheel is a slow Don Ellis feature for trombonist Glenn Ferris, who demonstrates a variety of sounds from the trombone. The
final Black Baby has lyrics spoken by Patti Allen but its main appeal is in Ellis’s poignant trumpet.

Don Ellis at Fillmore
was recorded at Bill Graham’s Fillmore West, a venue where rock fans were increasingly exposed to different types of music. They were obviously captivated
by the psychedelic sounds of the Ellis Orchestra and its espousal of rock rhythms. Don tries to appeal to them with some loud and often rabble-rousing
music – as in several of Don’s high-pitched solos and John Klemmer’s vigorous tenor-sax solo on Excursion II. Klemmer’s solo increases in
intensity, with assertive brass punching the air. Final Analysis teases the audience with several bombastic false endings.Fred Selden’s The Magic Bus Ate My Doughnut has a tempo which switches between 3/4, 4/4 and 5/4, reinforced by a persistent riff.

The Fillmore concert continues on the second CD. Don Ellis starts The Blues by showing off the number of effects he can gain from the trumpet,
although the result sounds like a nightmare farmyard. Salvatore Sam has the band in full-power mode, with a shrieking tenor solo going into double
time, before everything goes quiet for a while – but the peace is destroyed by the tenor and orchestra going wildly over the top. The same sort of thing
happens in Rock Odyssey, which starts with restraint but turns into jazz-rock which gets louder and louder.

The Beatles’ Hey Jude begins with unsettling trumpet-generated noises which sound like someone blowing vigorously into a water pipe. Only after
about three minutes does the melody appear, although it is obscured by more discordant noises. It may be the band’s attempt at humour but it is not very
appealing. Antea (in 7/4 time) is lifted by the stimulating percussion.

Don’s sleeve-notes describe John Klemmer’s Old Man’s Tear as “a musical portrait of an old man’s life”. It brings out the poetic side of Ellis and
his trumpet, although his ear-splitting cadenza tries a little bit too hard. Great Divide swings along smoothly, even though it is in 13/4,
divided into 3-3-2, 3-2. Lonnie Shetter contributes a rousing alto sax solo, backed only by percussion or even unaccompanied. Don’s composition Pussy Wiggle Stomp is the encore demanded by the eager audience. It includes a mighty but over-long drum feature with Ellis, Humphrey and Dunn all
percussing like mad.

This album is a mix of impressively intrepid big-band jazz and some bizarre sections which fail to impress.